Until recently, most water treatment facilities used chlorine until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stepped in. When chlorine is added to a water supply containing certain organics, the formation of halogenated organics occurs which are called "trihalogenated methanes" (THM's.) These products are suspected carcinogens and maximum allowable limits in municipal supplies are imposed by the EPA, so to reduce the potential for the formation of THM's, many U.S. municipal supplies are converting their chlorine disinfection method to chloramine. Chloramines have a low potential to form THM's.
Like chlorine, chloramine is used as an oxidant to kill bacteria and other harmful organisms (like coccidia) in our water supplies by penetrating their cell walls and disrupting their metabolism. Small doses of chlorine are safe to drink, but one problem water treatment plants have with chlorine is that it's unstable, and easily dissipated from the water. This means that the treatment plants need to put in higher levels of chlorine, so that they can be sure that some will remain in the water when it reaches our faucets.
Recently, many city's water systems have started treating tap water with chloramine instead of chlorine. Chloramine is a combination of chlorine and ammonia, and is much more stable than chlorine. It won't dissipate from the water as easily, and it isn't as likely to combine with other chemicals. But, chloramine isn't as good at killing off the microorganisms in the water as chlorine, so higher levels of chloramine are often used. Typically, water treatment plants use about 1 ppm of chloramine.
The biggest problem with chloramine is the long-term effect it has on substances like rubber, carbon and charcoal filters, and other substances that are used in applications such as fish tanks and reverse-osmosis (RO) treatments. There are many ways this can be corrected, but IMO it is going to be a BIG expense, and of course the taxpayers will be flipping the bill. It's reminiscent of when the automotive industry discovered that there were serious environmental issues surrounding the use of freon in radiators and the coolant in anti-freeze, so they converted all of the equipment so it could be used with "safe" replacements of those chemicals. ( A real nightmare...)
Anyway, at this point I really don't see this as a problem for any of us or our pets when it comes to the consumption of this "new" water. It will have some impact on aquarium and fish keepers, but I am positive that they will have some new substances to treat the water that contains choramine, just as they do for water that is chorinated. If necessary, we can always use bottled water like Calistoga for our reptiles.
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Marcia McGuiness
Golden Gate Geckos
www.goldengategeckos.com
